Montreal is, in many ways, a city of winding exterior stairs. If you’ve been there, then you know. The city is overwhelmingly a city of low-rise apartments (less than five storeys). And with these, comes lots of exterior circulation. But this tradition doesn’t just apply… Read More
One of the common criticisms of bike lanes is that most people don’t want to cycle in the winter. I mean, just look at Montreal’s winter cycling retention ratio. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t invest in cycling infrastructure. Chicago, for instance, has been… Read More
We landed in Lyon around 12:30 PM local time today. And it was about 15 degrees and sunny. This doesn’t bode well for fresh snow in the mountains. But it does bode well for getting a nice raccoon tan. Our flights and connections were heavily… Read More
Montréal had its first snowstorm of the season this week, and if you look on X, you’ll find images and videos like these: What’s remarkable is the number of people who, at least from these tweets, continue to cycle in the winter. In fact, in… Read More
Today, one of the top landscape architects in Canada — Claude Cormier — died from complications associated with something known as Li-Fraumeni Syndrome. He was only 63. Claude, and the firm he founded CCxA, have been responsible for some of the most beautiful, whimsical, and… Read More
Montreal has a bylaw that came into effect on April 1, 2021 and that requires developers to contribute to the city’s supply of social, affordable, and family housing. (All three of these have their own definition.) Developers can meet this requirement in a number of… Read More
The first phase of Montreal’s new Réseau express métropolitain (or REM) just opened it up. It is a 17 km light-rail line that includes five stations running from Brossard in the south (A1 above) to Gare Centrale in downtown Montreal. Eventually this network — which… Read More
As many of you know, I am an advocate for high-speed rail in Canada. Specifically along the Windsor-Quebec City corridor, which is the most densely populated part of the country. And so I found this comparison interesting: “If there is one project that would create thousands… Read More
We often talk about the challenges associated with smaller scale developments on this blog. They are difficult to underwrite, there are diseconomies of scale and, after a certain point, developers typically start to require a certain minimum size. In other words, if you have a… Read More
According to this annual survey by Henley & Partners (first chart from Bloomberg), these are the top 10 wealthiest cities in the world when you count the number of high-net-worth individuals (i.e. people with investable wealth greater than US$1 million): However, if you instead count… Read More
BRANDON DONNELLY 